Unity Between God and Mind? A Study on the RelationshipBetween Panpsychism and Pantheism

Joanna Leidenhag1

Published online: 9 November 2018

AbstractA number of contemporary philosophers have suggested that the recent revival ofinterest in panpsychism within philosophy of mind could reinvigorate a pantheisticphilosophy of religion. This project explores whether the combination and individua-tion problems, which have dominated recent scholarship within panpsychism, can aidthe pantheist’s articulation of a God/universe unity. Constitutive holistic panpsychism isseen to be the only type of panpsychism suited to aid pantheism in articulating this typeof unity. There are currently no well-developed solutions to the individuation problemfor this type of panpsychism. Moreover, the gestures towards a solution appear costly tothe religious significance of pantheism. This article concludes that any hope thatcontemporary panpsychism might aid pantheists in articulating unity is prematureand possibly misplaced.

Keywords Pantheism . Panpsychism . Combination problem .Unity . Philosophy ofmind

Introduction

For better or worse, philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion have a porousrelationship. This paper evaluates whether recent scholarship on panpsychism’scombination/individuation problem within philosophy of mind can be adapted toprovide the articulation of unity, both within the world and between the universe andGod, required for a philosophical articulation of pantheism.1

Panpsychism and pantheism have often appeared as complimentary positions withinthe history of philosophy (see James 1909/2008), and so, it is unsurprising that there

Sophia (2019) 58:543–561https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0688-z

1I would like to thank the John Templeton Foundation and the Pantheism and Panentheism Project forsponsoring this paper and the six anonymous peer-reviewers for their helpful feedback.

* Joanna Leidenhagjoannaleidenhag@gmail.com

1 New College, University of Edinburgh, Mound Place, Edinburgh EH1 2LX, UK

# The Author(s) 2018

has been some expectation that the growing resurgence of interest in panpsychism overthe last 30 years might reignite philosophical interest in pantheism. Panpsychistssometimes trace their lineage back to Thales’ reported statement, ‘all things are fullof gods’ (Aristotle 2007: 411a7). The term ‘panpsychia’ was coined by FrancescoPatrizi in the sixteenth century to refer to the phenomenal nature of the divineomnipresence, which links panpsychism and divine immanence (Nagasawaforthcoming). However, unlike many of their historical forebears, most contemporarypanpsychists construe panpsychism in a purely naturalistic fashion. That is, theexplicandum for panpsychists is not God or any religious unity, but (primarily) thehuman mind and subjective awareness. Yet, if mentality is in some way considered akinto divinity, then it is easy to suppose, prima facie, that the fundamental and oftenubiquitous position of mind within panpsychism is complimentary to pantheism.2 JohnMacquarrie exhibits this thinking when he writes that, ‘But God would be present tosome degree in everything, so that pantheism often combines with a doctrine ofpanpsychism’ (Macquarrie 1984: 53). However, the intuition that panpsychism andpantheism might be counterpart theories in mind and religion needs carefulexamination.

It is for this reason that leading contemporary pantheist, Michael Levine, writes thatneither pantheism nor panpsychism ‘entail one another, and the suggestion that pan-theism and panpsychism naturally go together is vague apart from specific accounts ofthe two positions’ (Levine 1994: 114). Levine draws a clear distinction betweenpanpsychism and pantheism so that the core claims of both theses extend far outsidethe purview of the other. In brief, panpsychism makes no direct claim on religiousviews and pantheism (in Levine’s hands) makes no claims on the origin or place ofconsciousness. Panpsychism and pantheism can certainly be held independently of oneanother. However, the question of whether panpsychism can aid pantheism in articu-lating a religiously significant model of unity within the universe is not discussed byLevine. This paper addresses this lacuna, not by evaluating the relationship betweenpanpsychism and pantheism through the vague notion that if mind is ubiquitous thenGod must be also, as Levine rightly critiques, but instead focuses on the structuralcorrespondence between the problems of mental combination and divine-world unitywithin each philosophy.

The first argument within this paper (Section 1: Pantheism and the Importance ofUnity and Section 2: Types of Panpsychism Relevant to Pantheism) is to show that thepantheist’s problem of unity and the panpsychist’s problems of combination are parallelproblems. First, it is shown that pantheism, to become a successful and popular positionwithin contemporary philosophy of religion, urgently requires a clear and distinctivearticulation of unity. It is argued that in order to demarcate pantheism fromneighbouring theological positions, the pantheist needs to articulate a constitutive unitywith regard to both the universe taken as a single whole and to the God-worldrelationship. Second, this paper argues that the type of panpsychism that is most likelyto aid the pantheist, in that it requires the same expression of unity as pantheism, isconstitutive holistic panpsychism. The third section moves on to the second main

2 Yujin Nagasawa argues that, if mentality is akin to divinity, then the more precise correspondence is betweenpantheism and cosmopsychism, whereas panpsychism corresponds to (an extreme form of) polytheism(Nagasawa forthcoming).

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argument of this paper; constitutive holistic panpsychism currently offers no successfulsolutions to the unity problem that it shares with pantheism. To argue this, I evaluate fourcontemporary models of constitutive holistic panpsychism in reference to pantheism. Itis seen that these panpsychist solutions are either inconsistent, underdeveloped, or comeat a significant religious cost to the pantheist. Overall, this paper argues that very fewversions of panpsychism are suited to aiding pantheists articulate unity, and the oneversion that is suited is currently unable to do so. As such, the revival in panpsychismcurrently offers much less hope for reigniting pantheism than might be imagined. It maybe that contemporary panpsychism holds more compatibility with non-pantheisticphilosophies of religion such as classical theism (as Leibniz argued) or panentheism(as Hartshorne argued). Indeed, Freya Mathews has suggested that panentheism maysimply be the religious equivalent of panpsychism (Mathews 2010). It is beyond thescope of this paper, which focuses on panpsychism’s relationship to pantheism, toevaluate this possibility, but it remains an important area for future research.

Section 1: Pantheism and the Importance of Unity

Pantheism stands at one end of a spectrum of views regarding the ‘God-world’ rela-tionship. As is implied in the name, pantheism is broadly the view that everything (pan)is God (theism). This definition sounds simple enough, but, of course, much depends onhow ‘everything’, ‘God’ and perhaps most importantly ‘is’ are more precisely defined.What ontological categories are included in everything and whether God is perceived asa personal or impersonal category, dictate what resources a pantheist has in when parsingout the unity between all things, which is the core of the pantheistic thesis.

Pantheism, in fact, asserts two relations of identity. First, God is identified with theuniverse (or vice versa), and second, all things within the universe are identified into asingle unity. Alasdair MacIntyre’s definition of pantheism captures this well. He writes,‘Pantheism essentially involves two assertions: that everything that exists constitutes aunity and that this all-inclusive unity is divine.’ (MacIntyre 1967: 34)3 FollowingMacIntyre’s definition, leading contemporary pantheist scholar Michael Levine speaksof ‘an all-inclusive divine unity’ (Levine 1994: 2). The pantheist, firstly, requires unitywithin the world so that God/universe can be understood as one single deity,distinguishing pantheism from polytheism. Secondly, the unity between God and worldmust be able to differentiate pantheism from other forms of theism which alsoemphasize a divine immanence.4

Douglas Hedley has argued (contra Michael Levine) that whereas Spinoza can beconsidered a pantheist because he posits ‘a constitutive unity (because one substance

3 Paul Harrison writes, ‘Two core beliefs lie at the heart of pantheism. All pantheists believe that the universeis divine, or that there is no distinction or separation between the universe and God. And they believe that theuniverse is in the deepest sense a unified whole of which all individual things are interdependent parts’(Harrison 1999: 1, 39). Graham Oppy also provides the two-part definition, ‘1. There is a unique thing ofwhich all things are parts. … 2. The thing of which all things are parts is divine’ (Oppy 1997: 320).4 As Douglas Hedley has argued, too long have theists and pantheists only dealt with Bcrude^ version of theiropponents positions, ‘The real debate is between subtle pantheism (SP) which proposes a unifying immanentforce worth of worship and subtle theism (ST) which proposes a causal relationship between a transcendentunity and the cosmos’ (Hedley 1996: 62).

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has modes and attributes)’, the Neoplatonists could not be considered pantheistsbecause they believed in ‘a causal relationship between the One and the Many’, whichis a non-constitutive unity (Hedley 1996: 65–66, italics added). My concern here is not,as it is for Hedley, with characterizing who was or was not a pantheist or theisthistorically. Instead, what I take from Hedley is the need for a more nuanced, perhapsless polemic, understanding of both theism and pantheism in the comparative literatureon these two positions. Theism should not be mischaracterised as a position lacking inall types of unity in the God-world relationship and pantheism should not be seen toposit unity of an unspecified nature. Instead, pantheism and theism are genuinereligious alternatives because they uphold different types of unity between God andthe world, constitutive unity and non-constitutive (or causal) unity, respectively.

Constitutive unity here refers a type of unity between levels or phenomena, wherebyif x is in constitutive unity with y, then all the true statements about y are true becausethey are true about x. Constitutive unity is sometimes seen as a reductive relation, inthat the unity between levels does not permit new properties at the higher-level that arenot constituted by the properties at the lower level. By contrast, x is unified with y in anon-constitutive relation if x is more than y in some way, there are some independenttruths about x. For a non-constitutive relation, there could be truths about x whichcannot be said to be true of y or are not true about x because of its unity with y (even ifthey are true about x and y separately). If a pantheist posits a non-constitutive unitybetween God and the world, then they would open a descriptive and causal gapbetween God and the world, thus failing to demarcate their position from alternativepositions. What I am suggesting here is that the type of unity between God and theuniverse necessary for demarcating pantheism from other neighbouring theologicalpositions is specifically constitutive unity; all statements which are true about God arealso true about the universe (when taken as a single whole), and it is because they aretrue about the universe that they are also true about God and vice versa.

Two common ways to posit unity within the universe are through either a materialistor idealist monism. Materialistic pantheism (sometimes called ‘scientific pantheism’ or‘naturalistic pantheism’) has long been charged with atheism.5 By defining everythingas exclusively material, or as exclusively knowable to the natural sciences,materialistic/scientific pantheism is in danger of reducing divinity to a sentimentalgloss which humans attach to an otherwise mechanistic and mindless universe.6 Hence,Schopenhauer’s famous objection to pantheism ‘is that it says nothing. To call theworld God is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluoussynonym for the word Bworld^’ (Schopenhauer 1951: 40). The implication is that ifGod is to be a religiously significant term or if pantheism is to have semantic contentbeyond atheism, then it cannot be merely a collective term for all the (purely) physicalobjects in the universe.

5 Coleridge, in his non-pantheistic phrase, claimed that ‘everything God, and no God, are identical positions’(McFarland 1969: 228). H.P. Owen (1971: 69–70) says, ‘if BGod^ (theos) is identical with the universe (topan) it is merely another name for the Universe’. Richard Dawkin’s writes that ‘Pantheism is sexed upatheism’ (Dawkins 2006: 40).6 Illingworth famously accused pantheism of being ‘materialism grown sentimental’ (Illingworth 1898: 69),and Henri Bergson writes that the result is to ‘hypostatize the unity of nature, or, what comes to the same thing,the unity of science, in a being who is nothing because he does nothing, an ineffectual God who simply sumsup in himself all the given’ (Urquhart 1919: 207, 614).

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Idealistic pantheism, by contrast, has been critiqued for implying that the materialuniverse and all which we perceive is an illusion or shadow of the Infinite Being.Idealistic pantheism has been a leading theory throughout the long history of Indianphilosophy. In the Rig-Veda (x.90) we read the pantheistic statement, ‘He [Brahman] isHimself the very universe. He is whatever is, has been, and shall be’ (Urquhart 1919:58). Early twentieth century commentators identify two movements within the panthe-ism of the Upanishads: the denial of the particularity of our ordinary experience so thatthere are no discrete objects and an absolute identity between the individual subject(Atman, the soul and no-self) and the divine Brahama, ‘so as to reach an absoluteunity’, a single self (Ibid: 109–118). The goal is ‘the fontal unity of undifferentiatedbeing’ (Ibid: 111). The individual Atman is not a small part of the divine being but iswholly and fully the divine being, since they are identified as one and the same. This isthe discovery that one’s own self and existence as an individual, discrete entity is anillusion; I do not really exist, or not in a differentiated sense. The conclusion that allmaterial existence and mental particularity does not exist is at best experientiallyunsatisfactory and at worst self-refuting (Descartes was at least correct about that).Pantheism requires an account of constitutive unity which can hold together the realityof particular individual subjects and a concept of a single universal whole.

Section 2: Types of Panpsychism Relevant to Pantheism

The ancient theory of consciousness, panpsychism, is undergoing something of arevival within philosophy of mind. Arguments put forward by renowned figures suchas Thomas Nagel, Galen Strawson and David J. Chalmers are being joined by anincreasing number of established philosophers defending the claim that panpsychism iscurrently the most cogent way to understand human consciousness and its place in anevolutionary world.

Panpsychism refers to a diverse range of theories all united by the broad idea that‘mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe’(Seager and Allen-Hermanson 2010).7 There are three main questions panpsychistsmust answer in constructing a specific type of panpsychism. (a) How (or where) is itbest to articulate fundamentality? Here the choice is between atomistic and holisticforms of panpsychism. (b) What type of mentality is necessary referring to thefundamental level of reality? Here the choice is between (subject) panpsychism andpanprotopsychism. (c) What is the relationship between human minds (macro-levelminds) and fundamental mind(s)? Here the choice is between constitutive and non-constitutive panpsychism. Each choice is fairly independent of the others, so that thereare eight possible versions of panpsychism. Here I will argue that constitutive holisticpanpsychism is the type of panpsychism most relevant to pantheism and thus mostpromising in aiding the pantheism in articulating the unity within the universe/God.

7 Philip Goff and Galen Strawson differentiate panpsychism from idealism. Goff defines panpsychism as ‘theview that fundamental physical entities are conscious’ (Goff 2017a: 283). Strawson writes that panpsychismmeans that ‘that the existence of every real concrete thing involves experiential being even if it also involvesnon-experiential being’ (Strawson 2006: 8).

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What Is Fundamental?: Atomistic Panpsychism vs. Holistic Panpsychism

To say that a property or entity is fundamental, in this context, is to suggest that itcannot be explained in terms of, composed of, or derived from anything else.Panpsychism is distinguished from traditional substance dualism by adopting someform of monism such that there can be only one fundamental level. This may containmind and matter together (dual-aspect or Russellian monism) or just mind (idealism).Whichever type of monism is proposed, there remain two options for articulatingfundamentality: atomism or holism. Atomistic panpsychism claims that the smallest,indivisible entities of the universe are what is fundamental, and so it is here that theyposit mentality. Holistic panpsychism claims that the universe, taken as a fundamentalsingle whole, is mental.

Atomistic panpsychism, which attributes mentality to the most basic, non-compositesubatomic waves and particles of the universe—the building blocks of reality, as itwere—is the default option for most panpsychists. This principle is largely taken asparallel to the basic intuition and methodology of the natural sciences that microphys-ical entities combine into macrophysical entities; an engine is made up of parts, partsare made of up of molecules, molecules are made up of atoms, etc.. Mereologicalrelationships remain a difficult area for any philosophy, but this appears particularlytricky in the case of mental parts and wholes.

Panpsychism’s explanatory promise rests upon the idea that human minds can beexplained by fundamental mental entities (the micro-mentality of electrons or quarks,or the cosmic-mentality of the universe as a whole). However, human self-reflectiveexperience is of a single unity or self; it is not transparent that human minds are acollection of selves. Therefore, a principle of either the combination of micro-phenomena to bring about real unity (and not mere aggregation) or the individuationof the cosmic-mentality to bring about bounded finite subjectivity lies at the core of thepanpsychist’s thesis.8 Without positing a theory of why some physical compositionsinstantiate bounded consciousness and first-person perspective and others do notpanpsychism quickly becomes an absurdity. This is called the Combination Problem.

The most well-known and probably the most difficult version of the combinationproblem is the Subject Summing Problem: How does the combination of two distinctsubjects, each with their own bounded first-person perspectives, yield an entirely newsubject? And, what is the new subject’s relation to the original two (or more) combinedsubjects? (Chalmers 2017: 182). This is directly related to what Gregg Rosenberg hastermed the Boundary Problem: How is it that micro-experiences combine to yield abounded consciousness that, as we saw in the subject-summing problem, appearsisolated and finite? (Rosenberg 1998: 77–90) Although the boundary problem hasreceived less attention, it may in fact be the hard-nut of these various problems since itfocuses not on what is to be combined but on the boundaries that prevent or enablecombination. Mental combination without boundaries is of no aid to the panpsychist orthe pantheist. This is because without bounded selves the finite individuals, whom both

8 What I call ‘the individuation problem’ has also been referred to as the ‘decombination problem’ by MiriAlbahari (forthcoming), the ‘decomposition problem’ by David Chalmers (Chalmers 2015), and the ‘deriva-tion problem’ by Yujin Nagasaw and Khai Wager (Nagasawa and Weger 2017). For an excellent treatment ofvarious types of combination that the atomistic panpsychist needs to account for, see Chalmers (2017: 179–214). I know of no such equally precise treatment of various individuation problems.

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theories maintain to some degree, would be lost. As Rosenberg writes, ‘in a worldwhere experiences combined according to a matrix or vector rules, for example, onemight predict an ocean of experience constituting universal consciousness, but notexperiences below that level: a comically cosmic god-mind, experiencing itself aloneforever’ (Rosenberg 2017: 156). From this, we can begin to see how some versions ofpanpsychism may dovetail with pantheism.

Chalmers’ exploration of the Subject Summing Problem and Rosenberg’s articula-tion of the Boundary Problem both approach this challenge from the perspective ofatomistic panpsychism, that is, they both seek an account of mental combination. Byholding that parts are more fundamental than wholes, atomistic panpsychism is adifficult starting place if one is looking for a way to articulate the primacy of unitywithin the universe, as the pantheist is. There has been one proposal to articulatepantheistic unity through atomistic panpsychism, however. Karl Pfeifer has explicitlyargued that a variety of panpsychism that he calls ‘panintentionalism’ can makepantheism’s unity claims more intelligible (Pfeifer 2016: 41). Contrary to this paper,Pfeifer concludes that ‘panpsychism can be tantamount to pantheism’ (Ibid.: 49).

Pfeifer’s first thesis is that the God of pantheism should be understood as a ‘massnoun’, which can be infinitely divided and combined without losing its essentialidentity. The first half of Pfeifer’s chapter concludes by viewing God as the metaphys-ical substratum of the universe, the stuff which the various objects of the universe areconfigurations of (Ibid.: 44). This first thesis seems plausible enough but has little to dowith panpsychism and does nothing to make the God of pantheism a religiouslysignificant concept, as opposed to merely a semantic term for the stuff of the universe(see Schopenhauer’s famous quote above). Pfeifer’s second thesis introducespanpsychism to try and aid pantheism becomes a more compelling position in philos-ophy of religion. Interestingly, whereas most forms of panpsychism are naturallyaligned with idealistic pantheism, Pfeifer’s builds a thoroughly materialistic pantheism.

The panpsychism in Pfeifer’s presentation can only very charitably referred to apanprotopsychism, since there is very little talk of ‘psyche’ at any level. Pfeifer’spanintentionalism is built on the identification of intentional mental states with physicaldispositional states, based on an analogy of the behaviour and capacities of these twophenomena. Intentional mental states are then described as the summation of lots ofcruder dispositional physical states (Ibid.: 47–48), making this an atomistic approach. Itis hard to discern, in this discussion, if Pfeifer is a realist about consciousness, which isthe backbone of the revival in contemporary panpsychism (Strawson 2006). There is nodiscussion of phenomenal consciousness, no talk of experience, or subjects of experi-ence in this chapter (it is perhaps telling that the philosophers of mind Pfeifer drawsupon for his panintentionalism are not panpsychists, i.e. Daniel Dennett, Fred I. Dretskeand John R. Searle). Without subjects of experience, it is hard to see whose intention-ality Pfeifer is discussing; it might be God’s since ‘the world [is] God’s brain’, but thenGod would not be a mass noun, but a countable subject (Ibid.: 41, 48, 49), and wewould be back to the drawing board on the individuation problem. Pfeifer’s proposalmay be a way to articulate materialistic pantheism, but it does not have a robust accountof mentality to convince this author that panintentionalism is a form of panpsychism,which is necessary in order to prove the thesis that panpsychism can be tantamount topantheism. Nor has Pfeifer successfully accounted of the combination/individuation ofsubjects within a cosmic-divine unity, which is the goal of this paper’s exploration.

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The alternative to atomistic panpsychism is holistic panpsychism. Different versionsof holistic panpsychism, such as ‘panexperiential holism’, ‘priority cosmopsychism’and ‘cosmological panpsychism’, all share the common thesis that the universe as asingle whole is the only fundamental entity, and therefore, it is the universe as a singlewhole which instantiates consciousness. This priority of cosmic unity suggests thatholistic panpsychism should be of some interest to the pantheist.

Ludwig Jaskolla and Alexander Buck’s panexperiential holism is a panexperientialistversion of ‘existencemonism’, which states that ‘there is exactly one entity—the universeitself’ (Jaskolla and Buck 2012: 197). This means that ‘strictly speaking there is only onereal subject—i.e. the big experiential subject of the universe as a whole’ (Ibid:198).Jaskolla and Buck write that combination ‘is not a problem for panexperiential holism atall, because there are no [micro] subjects to sum’ (Ibid: 197). Equally, however, Jaskollaand Buck could say that there are no subjects to individuate, because there are no subjectsexcept the universe itself as a single subject. It becomes very difficult to locate humanselves or subjects within the framework of existence monism; there is only one truesubject and all other appearances of subjectivity are defined as ‘one particular experientialpattern [that] the universe undergoes’ (Ibid: 198). Jaskolla and Buck refer to this quasi-abstract experiential pattern as individual, persisting, human selves (Ibid.). Jaskolla andBuck do not discuss the first-person perspective that we normally associate with subjects,and this creates some ambiguity in their paper. Since human selves are not ‘equally real asthe concrete pattern at a particular point in spacetime’, one can assume that human selvesdo not have their own first-person perspective. However, as long as human selves remainthe main explanandum of any philosophy of mind, then holistic panexperiential must bedeemed unsatisfactory. Panexperiential holism does not explain human subjectivity; itmerely ignores the question of human subjectivity all together and this is to evade thecore of the problem.

Other forms of holistic panpsychism are more promising. Itay Shani, Philip Goff,Yujin Nagasawa and Khai Wager all employ Jonathan Schaeffer’s priority monism(token monism), which states that the universe exists as a single whole but is not theonly truly existing entity (Schaeffer 2010a, b, 2013). Schaeffer argues that whereas foraggregates (such as a pile of sand), we intuitively consider the parts prior to the wholes;for genuine wholes, we intuitively consider the whole more basic (a circle is more basicthan a semi-circle; a body is more basic than a limb). Schaeffer argues that we shouldconsider the universe as a genuine whole and not an aggregate, more like a circle orbody than an aggregate pile of sand (Schaeffer 2010a: 31, 45–46). Some prioritycosmopsychists employ the metaphor of ‘a vast ocean of consciousness’ in a similarway to how Schaeffer employs a circle; the ocean can be understood to be a wholewhich can be divided, rather than a collection of water molecules (Shani 2015: 389–437, 411–412.).

Holistic panpsychism and pantheism both state that the universe is fundamentally asingle unified whole and not to be viewed as an aggregate or collection of individualparts. Priority monism seems to be a suitable model for holistic panpsychists andpantheists to adopt in seeking to emphasise the primary unity the single cosmic whole,without denying the reality of things within that whole. Panpsychists use the unity ofconsciousness to give articulation of the nature of this cosmic unity; the universe can betaken as a single whole because it consists in a single consciousness. This seems a verypromising way for pantheism to express the unity within the universe. A pantheist

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would then only need to identify (in a one to one identity relation) this singleconsciousness with God.

The move towards holistic panpsychism is often motivated by the desire to retreataway from such the problems of combination. However, this move runs into the armsof an equally difficult problem: the Individuation Problem. Although this problem isoften gestured to and widely acknowledged, I know of no precise articulation of thetypes of individuation that a holistic panpsychist needs to account for. There are, to mymind, at least six overlapping types of individuation problems:

How does one consciousness give rise to many distinct subjects, whose experienceand perspective is neither identical to each other, nor to the former single con-sciousness? (the Subject Individuation Problem)How does one quality laden field individuate into distinct qualities such thatindividual subjects may experience these qualities and not others? (the QualityIndividuation Problem)How does one experiential field individuate into distinct experiences, such thatindividual subjects may enjoy some experiences and not others, and some expe-riences may be had by one subject but not another subject? (the ExperienceIndividuation Problem)How does one experiential or quality laden field individuate into subjects whichhave bounded awareness? (the Awareness Individuation Problem)How does the cosmically structured (we might say sparsely structured), unbound-ed cosmic consciousness or field of experience structure itself in such a way as tohold within it distinct (compactly structured) subjects and qualities? (the StructuralIndividuation Problem)

Atomistic panpsychists are keen to defend that not all combinations of matter give riseto new macro-subjects. One of the reasons a theory of combination is so important foratomistic panpsychism is to avoid the absurd conclusion that every combination ofmatter gives rise to a new individual subject. Holistic panpsychism has a similarproblem of over-individuation:

What prevents the continuous individuation of consciousness so that every con-figuration of matter at every level of reality is a discrete agent? (the Over-individuation Problem)

Since it seems that my consciousness and experience is not identical to yours, andsince there are many qualities which I believe I have not yet experienced, then Iam justified in believing my own mind to be finite, personal and private. It is anecessary part of the holistic panpsychist’s task to provide an account for the howan infinite, universal and public cosmic consciousness takes on these properties ofa single human mind.

Given that, like holistic panpsychism, pantheism takes the unity of the world asprimary, it is panpsychism’s individuation problem which is most pertinent to panthe-ism. It is not enough to simply claim that the universe is a single whole, there must alsobe an explanation for how the reality of my own subjectivity, of which I am mostintimately acquainted and committed to, relates to and might be explained in relation to,

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this cosmic whole. In this way, the pantheist’s problem of unity and the holisticpanpsychist’s problem of individuation are parallel problems.

What Type of Mind?: Subject Panpsychism vs. Panprotopsychism

The second point of variation is the question of how to define mind in its fundamentalform. Panpsychists here form two camps: subject-panpsychists and panprotopsychists(including panexperientailists and panqualityists). Subject-panpsychists posit minimalsubjects at the fundamental level (micro or cosmic), in that there is something that it islike to be a fundamental subject of experience (an electron or the universe as a whole).Subject-panpsychists argue that if it is the first-person perspective of subjects that isnon-emergent and irreducible, then it is the first-person perspective that needs to beseen as a fundamental property.

However, Sam Coleman has pointed out that it is the claim for fundamental subjectsthat gives rise to the sharpest edge of the combination/individuation problem—thesumming of phenomenally unified and bounded macrosubjects from microsubjects(Coleman 2014: 19–44). Alternatively, panprotopsychism denies that fundamentalmentality includes a micro-subjects or cosmic subjects, such that there is nothing it islike to be an electron or the universe as a whole. Instead, panprotopsychism suggeststhat some other mental property can instantiate phenomenal properties and the first-person perspective. For example, panexperientialists state that experiences are funda-mental (without the existence of a subject having that experience), and a panqualityistclaims that unexperienced qualities can collectively constitute a first-person perspectiveor fully phenomenal property.

The main advantage of panprotopsychism is that it does not face a subject-summingproblem, since it holds that subjects do not sum but only result from non-subjectssumming. However, the mysterious nature of these proto-phenomenal properties alsomeans that panprotopsychism offers less explanatory power or competitive appeal overstrong emergence theory or interactive substance dualism. This sacrifice might beacceptable if panprotopsychism really avoided the combination problem. Unfortunate-ly, the problem of how subjects are constituted by a combination of non-subjects maynot be any less difficult than the subject panpsychism’s subject-summing problem andmay be no less miraculous than the strong emergence thesis of obtaining subjectivityfrom physical properties. Weighing these factors, panprotopsychism seems to have anintuitive advantage, but explanatory disadvantage, in comparison to subjectpanpsychism. It remains up to individual panpsychists to decide which of these factorsis more valuable and this decision has no bearing of the conclusions of this paper. Themore important question for this paper is which of these two alternatives servespantheism best.

Pantheists who argue for a personal god are more likely, prima facie, to be attracted toholistic (subject) panpsychism than to holistic panprotopsychism. Holistic panpsychismclaims that the fundamental consciousness of the universe as a whole has its own first-person perspective, although it may be of a very different kind to our neurologicallyconstrained consciousness. Pantheists who argue that the god of pantheism is non-personal and non-agential are likely to prefer a holistic panprotopsychism, where thecosmic whole is taken as proto-phenomenal. A pantheistic use of panprotopsychismwould mean that there is nothing that it is like to be the universe/God.

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The question arises if proto-phenomenal properties are a sufficient basis for positingcosmic unity. On holistic panprotopsychism, the universe would be a single proto-phenomenal whole: a single experience or a single quality. Although a single phenom-enal subject, with a single first-person perspective, provides a clearer sense of unity, Icannot rule out the possibility (although I find it unlikely) that proto-phenomenalproperties are adequate to establish a cosmic unity. Fortunately, this question doesnot prevent this article for proceeding, since the decision of whether subjectpanpsychism or panprotopsychism is more suited to solving the pantheists unityproblem is determined not by the preference for a personal or impersonal deity butby the pantheists need for a constitutive unity. As is more fully argued below, a proto-phenomenal cosmos cannot constitutively instantiate human subjectivity within itsaspects and so if pantheists wish to maintain human subjectivity—even within animpersonal divine-cosmos, pantheism needs to align itself with subject panpsychismand not panprotopsychism.

Constitutive Panpsychism vs. Non-constitutive Panpsychism

Is human consciousness constituted by the fundamental mentality, or do our minds holdsome other non-constitutive relation to fundamental mentality? Constitutivepanpsychists argue that ‘macroexperience is (wholly or partially) grounded inmicroexperience’ (Chalmers 2017: 25). ‘Grounded in’ is used as equivocal to ‘meta-physically constituted by’; all true statements about the macro-level are true because oftruths at the micro-level. The relationship between the parts and the whole is synchro-nous and not a causal relation. On constitutive panpsychism, the macro-level phenom-ena can be said to be nothing but its micro-level phenomena and their relations. Orconversely, on constitutive panpsychism, the fundamental level is said to be whollysufficient as an explanation for the existence of the human mind. In addition, theconstitutive relation means that the fundamental minds or phenomena continue to existand are neither lost nor annihilated by the existence of the macro-mind. This is becauseif there were no truths at the micro-level, then they could neither be truths at the macro-level according to the constitutive relation. This synchronic constitutive relation seemsexactly right for the pantheist model of unity; God is the universe as a whole andnothing more, and the whole universe is God in such a way that does not annihilate thesubjects (and objects) of the universe. Unfortunately, constitutive panpsychism carriesthe full force of the combination/individuation problem, and most of the argumentsagainst panpsychism over the possibility of combination were more precisely againstconstitutive panpsychism.

Non-constitutive panpsychists often seek to deflate the combination/individuationproblem by positing a causal, rather than synchronous combining or individuating,relation between the fundamental mentality and the human mind. For a non-constitutivepanpsychist, the macro-entity (the human mind) is more than the sum of the micro-entities and their relations. The main type of non-constitutive relation is the emergencerelation, which claims that a macro-mind (animal or human) is a (strongly) emergentfeature of micro-minds (Brüntrup 2017: 48–71; Rosenberg 2017: 153–175). A sub-typeof emergent panpsychism has been argued for by William Seager in his theory ofpanpsychist infusion (Seager 2010: 239). The distinctive feature of the fusion accountof emergent panpsychism is that the fused entities cease to exist as separate entities;

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they sacrifice themselves and their causal powers to the creation of the new emergentmacro-entity.

Non-constitutive relationships between the whole and the parts are unsuited toholistic panpsychism. An aspect of the universe cannot exceed or be more than thesum of the universe, since the universe is an exhaustive unity. It is hard to imagine whatit could mean for the contents of the universe to emerge from the universe, since theuniverse is not an empty (divine) chamber existing prior to its contents. The contents ofthe universe cannot manifest a property which the universe itself also does not manifest(albeit only in a particular aspect). Since panprotopsychism states that through combi-nation something more (i.e. subjectivity) comes into being, panprotopsychism seems tobe incompatible with holistic panpsychism. Furthermore, it is logically incoherent tosuggest that the universe can fuse, and therefore cease to exist, for the sake of creatingsome aspect within the universe (what would the universe even fuse with?). Non-constitutive panpsychism, in either emergent panpsychism or combinatorial infusionforms, does not seem able to be adapted for holistic panpsychism’s individuationproblems.

I have already stated in Section 1 that pantheism requires a constitutive relation ofunity in order to demarcate it from other forms of theist immanence. This point can nowbecome clearer. If the unity between God and the universe is an emergence based unity,then the claim might be that God emerges from the universe as new individual orproperty. This emergent theism, as put forward by Samuel Alexander is not a version ofpantheism. Alexander’s emergent theism has a clear temporal separation betweenemergent deity and the universe, so that God does not permeate the whole universebut is contained within the space-time continuum as one part (Alexander 1920: 394,397–8; cf. Thomas 2016). Alternatively, the universe may emerge from God, whichseems close to a theistic or panentheistic model of emanation. In both cases, thedistinction between God and the universe is too strong for a pantheist expression ofunity.

What we can take from the discussion above is that the closest form of panpsychismto pantheism seems to be a constitutive holistic panpsychism. For a pantheist, it is theuniverse as a whole which is given ontological priority and taken as fundamental, as forholistic panpsychism. For this unity to be sufficiently robust and bare a constitutiverelationship to human subjects, then subject panpsychism (and not panprotopsychism)is required. Lastly, the relationship between fundamental mentality and human mindsmust, for pantheists, be a constitutive relation. The argument so far as shown thatconstitutive holistic panpsychism, and not any other type of panpsychism, has the bestchance to aiding pantheists solve their unity problem. If holistic panpsychists can find aconstitutive solution to the individuation problem, then this should give pantheism amore cogent way of articulating the ‘all-inclusive divine unity’ (Levine 1994: 2).

Section 3: Combination Solutions and Unity Problems

How then do constitutive holistic panpsychists articulate the relationship between thecosmic consciousness and human consciousness? Are any of the solutions currently onoffer sufficient to articulate the pantheists expression of unity? In this final session I willaddress the theories put forward by holistic panpsychists, Itay Shani, Yujin Nagasawa,

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Freya Mathews and Philip Goff. Goff’s is deemed the most promising, despite beingwoefully incomplete, but it includes strict constraints upon the nature of the cosmic(divine) subject which pantheists will most likely reject.

Itay Shani describes the universe as ‘a vast ocean of consciousness’, or an ‘oceanicplenum... [which] gives rise to various quasi-independent patterns and configurations...someof these emergent forms...qualify as genuine subjects’ (Shani 2015: 389–437, 411–412).Human and animal subjects are described using aquatic metaphors as ‘local disturbancescoursing the ocean as currents, waves, streams, eddies, bubbles, ripples, and thelike...vortices of enduring stability, the latter corresponding to the persistent systems andobjects of our ontology’ (Ibid: 414). Human subjects emerge from these structural dynamicswithin the universe as ‘the crystallized ego-structure, the self-centred mental occupation ofthe individual Bvortex^’ (Ibid: 419). The emergence which Shani talks about is a weak formof emergence, because he describes it as ‘nothing but dynamic differentiations with theabsolute; all are predicated on an underlying flux from which they emerge, and to whichthey ultimately dissolve’ (Ibid: 413). The predication and ‘nothing but’ are the clues thatShani’s relative subjects (like you and me) are weakly emergent from the whole. This is apossible theory of constitutive individuation, unlike the non-constitutive strong emergentpanpsychism discussed above. However, weakly emergent entities have no additional causalpowers, which in this case means human experience and action is determined by theabsolute. The threat here is that Shani’s relative subjects are epiphenomenal, submerged‘in an engulfing oceanic consciousness’ (Ibid: 390).

It is for this reason that, in addition to the weak emergence theory, Shani alsoarticulates a partial grounding thesis. Partial grounding here means that ‘while [thehuman subject] depends on [the absolute subject] it amounts of something more and isnot exhausted by this particular dependency relationship’ (Ibid: 423). Shani wants tomaintain the irreducibility of human subjectivity by describing the human subject-vortex as ‘an independent entity which neither grounds any other perspective, nor beinggrounded by any’ other (Ibid: 423). If human subjectivity is not grounded in theoceanic consciousness of the universe, where does this ‘independent entity’ comefrom? This seems to imply something closer to substance dualism, where the subjec-tivity at the human level is fundamental and independent and where the first-personperspective is non-combining and non-individuating. Since weakly emergent subjectsare reducible, this model cannot be combined with independent and irreducible sub-jects. In his fluctuating between two incompatible and competing models of conscious-ness—weakly emergent subjects and fundamental independent subjects—Shani fails tofind the middle ground necessary for cosmopsychism to be a viable and demarcatedposition of human subjectivity.

Whereas this paper asks the question of whether panpsychists’ answers to thecombination problem hold any profit for pantheism, Yujin Nagasawa’s investigationmoves in the opposition direction from philosophy of religion to philosophy of mind.He argues by analogy that because polytheism and pantheism are compatible positionswithin philosophy of religion, the many animal subjects are compatible within a singlecosmic subject within philosophy of mind (Nagasawa forthcoming). Although this maybe the case, it does not seem to offer any explanatory relief for my concerns forindividuation, since we can know very little about the relationship between polytheisticgods and a pantheistic God. Nagasawa offers no further explanation for why polythe-ism and pantheism are compatible and so sheds no further light on how the analogy to

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divinity aids in the question of how private individual minds, as we experience them,individuate from a single cosmic mind.

Beyond the comparison with philosophy of religion, Nagasawa gives two moremetaphors for how to understand the relationship between the one and many forcosmopsychism. He suggests we think of the cosmic consciousness like a perfectlyand infinitely smooth painting, which since perfectly and infinitely smooth is not madeup of many atomistic dots (Nagasawa forthcoming; Nagasawa and Weger 2017: 122).Within this one smooth homogeneous painting, there can be an equally smoothsegment of the painting or the original painting may be a segment of an even largerperfectly smooth homogeneous painting. Nagasawa suggests that this might be analo-gous to the relationship between the larger consciousness of the cosmos and theconsciousness instantiated by the brain. This analogy does nothing to alleviate myconcerns regarding the Over-individuation Problem. This is because if a segment of apainting is more than a portion which the hypothetical viewer chooses to draw animaginary line around, then the painting is not perfectly smooth and homogenous. If thepainting is truly perfectly smooth and homogeneous, then the segment cannot beobjectively differentiated or individuated from the larger whole.

Nagasawa’s second analogy is to a visual experience which can be considered aunity and segmented into distinguishable colour experience (Nagasawa and Weger2017: 121–122). Developing this line of thinking may answer the Quality IndividuationProblem and the Experience Individuation Problem as I have outlined them above.However, since this analogy is about segments of one experience and regional qualitieswithin one subject/perspective, with no further subjects/perspectives being proposed, itgoes no way towards answering the Subject Individuation Problem. Nagasawa’sproposal cannot yet, to my mind, fully defend the claim that ‘it seems reasonable tothink that cosmopsychism can answer the derivation problem’ when this is applied tothe derivation of bounded subjects (Nagasawa forthcoming).

Freya Mathews’ work is a significant attempt to ‘enter the terrain of Bspirituality^’through ‘cosmological panpsychism’ (Mathews 2011: 141). Mathews speaks of thehuman relationship to the world as ‘kneeling tenderly at its feet, awaiting its command,trying to divine its will. From this point of view the world is our sovereign, our solace,our beloved, and we are its people’ (Mathews 2003: 1). The relationship between theone (the cosmic self) and the many (all relative selves such as humans and ecosystems)is an erotic and mutually self-realizing communication (Ibid: 10). Mathews’ construc-tion of a spiritual panpsychism is in line with many ideas within pantheism.

Since her spirituality of erotic communication is based on the presupposition ofindividuated relative subjects within the cosmic subject, Mathews sees the importanceof individuation for holistic panpsychism. Mathews articulates that ‘The question, fromthis point of view, is … how it is that a particular part of the continuum can come toexperience itself as a relatively distinct and individual subject, or center of awareness’(Ibid: 38). She affirms that there is ‘no such thing as free-floating subjectivity—subjectivity that does not belong to a particular subject’ (Ibid: 46). This means thatthere is no substance called ‘subjectivity’ which is organized into centred subjects, butthat the One subject must differentiate itself into many centres of subjectivity. However,she also affirms that a subject is ‘necessarily an indivisible unity: there are no Bscatteredsubjects^’, even in the case of the one differentiated cosmic subject (Ibid: 46). Finally,she states that ‘the boundaries between even only relatively individuated subjects are

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not nominal’. (Ibid: 46) This is in contrast to the individuation of matter which has a‘purely nominal status’ (Ibid: 47). She acknowledges a ‘tension’ in her proposalbetween ‘relative individuation. [of subjects] … with their relative dissociation fromthe whole’ and the indivisibility of the whole (Ibid: 40). The question remains if theboundaries between subjects are objectively real and subjects are indivisible unities,then how can many relative subjects, with their own first-person perspectives, existwithin another without the whole subject being a scattered subject? How is the unity ofthe cosmic subject maintained?

Mathews’ solution to the individuation problem is expressed through systems theory.She defines a self as a ‘self-realizing system … [which is] defined in systems-theoretical terms, as a system with a very special kind of goal, namely its ownmaintenance and self-perpetuation’ (Mathews 2003: 48). A relative self is individuatedby becoming self-reflexive which occurs ‘wherever the primal field assumes theconfigurations characteristic of self-realizing systems’ (Ibid: 50). Mathews groundssubject individuation in biological individuation, despite having said that biologicalindividuation is nominal (existing by name only from the perspective of knowing/naming subject), whereas subject individuation is not. There is a risk that to speak of‘self-realizing systems’ presupposes, a self around which the system is organized,rather than a self which arises out of the behaviour of the system.

Mathews concludes that ‘Individuation will not, in the case of such systems [whichis in the case of every subject Mathews posits], be precise, and questions of demarca-tion will certainly arise’ (Ibid: 51). However, without clear demarcation, what does itmean to assert that subjects are objectively bounded indivisible unities? Withoutdemarcation, there can be no genuine communication between different selves, andcommunication constitutes the flourishing of the many and the self-realization of theone. Mathews’ larger project rests on the presupposition of individuation, but herbiological systems-based account does not go far enough, in my mind, to securingand articulating a theory of subject and perspective individuation.

The final possible solution is Philip Goff’s theory of ‘grounding by subsumption’.This is a solution which, although underdeveloped, might be suitable for the pantheist.Grounding by subsumption is defined as:

Entity X grounds by subsumption entity in Y iff (i) X grounds Y, (ii) X is a unityof which Y is an aspect. (Goff 2017b: 224)

On this view, finite minds, such as human minds, are aspects of the one unified cosmicmind. Finite minds are grounded in the more expansive infinite unity, because as withnormal grounding relations, all true statements at the finite (human) level are truebecause of facts at the cosmic level. The weakness of this solution is that it is ultimatelymysterious—‘knee deep in noumenalism’ (Ibid: 234–35) as Goff writes.9 From apanpsychist’s perspective, it is unclear if Goff’s noumenalism is any better than strongemergentists’ or the mystery of combination within atomistic panpsychism. However,since the pantheist is not so much looking for an exhaustive explanation of God as a

9 From a panpsychists perspective, if this is Goff’s final conclusion then for the sake of parsimony perhapsColin McGinn’s hypothesis should be accepted without the bother of articulating a cosmic consciousnessabout which we can know nothing (McGinn 1989).

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credible articulation, this may not be so severe a problem. Goff is clear that thisproposal only works for holistic subject panpsychism and so would be unsuited toimpersonal, non-agential and non-subject based versions of pantheism. It is thiscomponent of Goff’s proposal which may be problematic for the pantheist.

Goff’s solution only applies to subject panpsychism because, as a constitutiverelation, grounding by subsumption entails that, ‘the nature of an aspect that it isnothing over and above the unity of which it is an aspect’ (Ibid: 229). The aspects(human minds) cannot have properties or capacities over and above the cosmic mind.10

Since all the finite subjects are subsumed within and constituted by the cosmic subject,the cosmic subject would have to be aware of all the experiences and perspectives ofthe multitude of finite subjects. This could be a theory of omniscience for the cosmicsubject. However, the cosmic subject would not only know about each first-perspec-tive, but it would also experience them all as its own first-person perspective. Since thecosmic subject is nothing over and above the finite subjects, it would not be able toharmonize or adjudicate between contrary beliefs or experiences. A holistic panpsychistshould not claim that the many first-person perspectives combine into one cosmicconsciousness, since this only places the atomistic panpsychists combination problemon a cosmic scale but needs to hold that the cosmic consciousness is a unity of non-harmonized subjectivities. Goff writes, ‘Cosmopsychism does not entail pantheism. Weneed not think of the universe as a supremely intelligent rational agent.... It is moreplausible to think that the consciousness of the universe is simply a mess’ (Ibid: 246).In so far as pantheism seeks to offer a religious alternative to theism, Goff is wrong toimply that pantheism entails the belief in a ‘supremely intelligent rational agent’, but itdoes entail a unified deity worthy of worship, adoration and capable to giving religiousmeaning to human lives. Is Goff’s cosmic subject a suitable candidate for not onlyphilosophy of mind, but also philosophy of religion?

Goff’s grounding by subsumption solution sets fairly strict guidelines for the natureof the God/universe, which determine its religious significance in specific ways. Asstated above, the pantheist God may be said to be omniscient in this specific sense,which includes confusion and incoherence. A pantheist God, inspired by Goff’spanpsychism, may also be said to be omnipotent in a qualified sense. Holisticpanpsychism implies that ‘the actions of [ordinary] o-subjects as aspects of—and henceare nothing over and above—the ‘actions’ of the universe.... the causal powers of theuniverse result in its changing itself from moment to moment’ (Ibid: 250). Thus,everything that happens in the universe could not have happened otherwise(determinism) and occurred due to the movement of the universe as a whole andcannot be ultimately attributed to the movements to localised or individual aspects ofthe universe, i.e. no libertarian free will (Ibid: 257).11 To this extent, the pantheist mayexpress gratitude or lament towards cosmic whole for all the events in one’s life, inaddition to one’s own existence (although, of course, this expression of gratitude is

10 Goff writes: ‘Panprotopsychist subject-subsumption does not seem to me to be coherent, at least once weaccept that conscious subjects are irreducible... for an entity E to have a unified nature to incorporate M [aconscious mind] within itself. And surely E cannot incorporate a conscious mind within its nature withoutitself being conscious’ (Goff 2017a, 2017b: 234).11 A careful discussion of regarding compatibalist notions of freedom within form of pantheism is necessaryhere and may provide the pantheistic a way to employing Goff’s model without suffering this consequence butlies beyond the scope of this paper.

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determined also and so might be viewed as the self-congratulation of the cosmic self).That said, given the ‘messy’ nature of the cosmic consciousness, it is difficult to viewthis movement as in any way planned or purposeful. Indeed, for the cosmic self to haveintentions of its own would be for it to exist over and above, rather than in unity with,the animal and human subjectivities of the universe. This is clearly a very differentsense of omnipotence to what is meant by the monotheistic world religions or theisticbelief in a transcendent personal creator, which may not be a problem for the pantheistof course.

More seriously for many pantheists, the determinism herein may provide somechallenges to the ethical imperative towards care for the Earth, ecosystem, and universeas a whole which pantheism is often associated with and motivated by. In fact, thedestruction of the Earth would not be the fault of human beings (since humans do notultimately cause anything), on this model. Instead, ecological destruction would be theresult of the universe’s/God’s action towards this specific internal region we call Earth.On this view, suffering and destruction could only be explained as the confused cosmicGod harming parts of itself. This implication alone may cause some pantheists to rejectGoff’s ‘cosmopsychism’ as a suitable expression of the pantheistic unity. However, inthis case, the pantheist will need to look elsewhere than panpsychism to aid inarticulating the nature of this unity.

Section 4: Conclusions

For panpsychism to maintain a competitive, explanatory edge over and against com-peting philosophies of mind, and for pantheism to offer a clear articulation of the God/universe unity distinguishable from other forms of religious belief, both theories requirean account of how smaller subjects can form parts of larger subjects (combination) orhow larger subjects contain smaller subjects within themselves (individuation). Al-though not identical problems, the first half of this paper showed the parallel nature ofthe pantheists’ problem of unity and the panpsychists’ problem of combination/individuation.

Holistic panpsychism and pantheism share a common problem, how to articulate aconstitutive relation between individual human subjects and a larger cosmic whole; butcan they share a common solution? If translated into panpsychist typologies, thenpantheism seeks a constitutive relation of individuation between God/the universeand the contents of the universe (in particular, human subjects). After surveying variousattempts by panpsychists (Shani, Nagasawa, Mathews and Goff) to articulate thisrelation, this paper found that Goff’s grounding by subsumption appears the mostpromising, but is significantly underdeveloped. However, it will be up to contemporarypantheists to decide whether the religious entailments of this position disqualify it fromwarranting further development. I suspect many pantheists will find Goff’s position abitter pill to swallow.

This paper sought to explore the dialogue and potential compatibility betweenpanpsychism and pantheism. The first implication from this paper is that there are farmore types of panpsychism incompatible to pantheism than there are compatible withit. This points to a tension within the relationship between panpsychism and pantheismwhich has so far not be appreciated and should be of concern to those who seek to unify

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these two philosophies. A secondary implication for further research, as it wouldrequire another paper to be explored fully, is that other positions within philosophyof religion (theism, panentheism, polytheism, etc.) may find dialogue with variousforms of panpsychism easier and more profitable than previously imagined.

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 InternationalLicense (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and repro-duction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide alink to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

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